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Revision as of 14:51, 21 July 2005

Archive 1

Mediator request

You're not invited to the Mediation on the Terry Schiavo article. It's not a "sign-up" thing. Please avoid editing there. You are welcome at talk:Terry Schiavo, though.

Uncle Ed of the Misplaced Pages:Mediation Committee, 00:41, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

You seem to think that merely because you're an admin you have total leave to tell everyone what they should or should not do and where they can or cannot post, and that you have the right to generally just do as you please and be as discourteous as you like to anyone who doesn't want to play your games. I haven't violated any official wikipedia policy, if I'm raining on your parade by participating in Mediation, that's just too bad. --Uthar Wynn 01 01:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

And by the way, you're not invited to my Talk Page. It's not a "sign-up" thing. Please avoid editing here. --Uthar Wynn 01 01:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Are you slimvirgin-ing Uncle Ed? If so, please be less arrogant. 4.250.132.22 12:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Behave

You wrote: "rv, mikkalai stop being an immature dick". Behave yourself! You know better. (P.S. Read Duckecho's personal page and its discussion page. I knew the Gordan was a XXXXX but I had no idea! 4.250.132.22 12:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, mikkalai is the absolute worst wikipedia admin I can think of.

And as far as Gordon is concerned, he can go f**k himself. Gordon really makes me angry. I've had it with the Terri Schaivo article - when delusional, arrogant whackos like Gordon are given the same degree of respect as people like Duckecho, nothing will ever get done. The Terri Schaivo mediation is a joke, perhaps there would be some chance of coming to some sort of compromise if they IP banned Gordon's ass so he couldn't participate, but no, its going to go on forever because of one lunatic with an agenda. Uncle Ed is a ineffective time-waster who couldn't resolve the Schaivo conflict if his life depended on it, he's a total fraud and I won't apologize for insulting him either. --Uthar Wynn 01 16:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

You'll have to try harder than that, if you want to offend me! <chuckle> See User talk:Ed Poor/ways to offend me. Uncle Ed 14:51, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

No, I'm not "slim-virgining" Ed, when Fuel invited me to join in an RFC on SlimVirgin, I declined. Some people may disagree, but I think slimvirgin is a decent, well-intentioned, basically rational admin who may not be perfect, but is certainly not the power-mad, abusive person people have potrayed her as. Even though we are on opposite "sides" of the Schaivo dispute, I don't have anything against her personally.

I don't really think Uncle Ed has bad intentions either, but he's a total joke and he's just wasting everybody's time. Even though he probably doesn't realize it, all he does on the Schaivo Mediation is play pointless little games that never accomplish anything and only keep the conflict going. Until obnoxious nut jobs like Gordon are taken out of the picture, the Mediation is completely pointless and FuelWagon is wasting his time and energy participating in it - he's not going to get anywhere (Ed will see to that). It won't matter how many good points he makes, whatever compromises he offers, Gordon and his buddies are not going to rest until the Schaivo article is full of half-baked lies and POV distortions. --Uthar Wynn 01 16:44, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Uthar, take this as from someone who knows: do not let another editor's behaviour, no matter how attrocious it is, get you banned. A phyrric victory is no victory. You're job as an individual editor is to bring your individual opinion to an article as to what will make it better. If you let the opinion of another editor, no matter how moronic, get you banned, then you are not doing your job. If enough clear thinking editors work on an article together, they should be able to come to a version that represents the truth of the matter, despite the best efforts of the POV pushers. You will have to decide if it is more important that wikipedia articles represent the truth and you swallow a bit of your pride or if you allow your emotions to win out and wikipedia to lose because the POV pushers win. These are your choices. There are no alternatives. Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution system makes it easy to spot people who curse and ban them, but it is difficult to establish something more subjective like the intentional insertion of a bad/POV edit. If you want to fight bad edits, you will have to find a way to vent without breaking the personal attack rules. Otherwise, if someone pushes a POV edit into an article, and you swear at them, then they can report you for swearing and you'll get blocked, and you'll report them for POV editing, and nothing much of consequence will be done. These are you choices: stop your personal attacks or let polite POV pushers win. choose.

FuelWagon 18:33, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

PETA

Hi Uthar, could you say why you changed "terrorist threat" to "terrorist organization," when I think the source says the former? Or did I misread the reference? SlimVirgin 18:41, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Both phrasings are used in the source, the "terrorist organization" one is extracted from another sentence. The DHS guy uses the phrase "that doesn’t de-emphasize our interest in *other* domestic terror groups" right after talking about the ALF/ELF which definitely means that they consider ALF/ELF to be "domestic terror groups" aka "terrorist organizations". It's an indirect quote, but the implication is unquestionable.

So yeah. It's kind of convoluted. Which phrasing to use is really a matter of choice, both phrasings (the previous one and mine) are, literally speaking, accurate to the source, I chose "classified as terrorist organizations" because "described as terrorist threats" could imply that ALF/ELF aren't groups organized for the express purpose of carrying out terrorist activities (contrary to the DHS view I mean, i'm trying to stay true to the DHS meaning), and/or that it's just a description from a certain DHS person, as opposed to official DHS policy. I think the "terrorist threats" phrasing has too mild a connotation when compared to the implication of the DHS, that these are "terrorist groups" and their members are "terrorists".

To sum it up, I changed the phrasing because while the "terrorist threats" phrasing is literally accurate to the source, I think the "terrorist organizations" phrasing is both literally accurate and more accurate to the tone of the source.

Hi Uthar, thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize that he talked about "other terror groups" right after talking about the ALF, so what you say makes sense. I'd still prefer to use "terrorist threat," however, because it's in quotation marks, and that's the DHS official position so far as I can tell. My other concern is that the FBI acknowledges that the ALF sticks to its non-violent policy in the U.S., and yet wants to classify them as terrorist threats, which makes no sense to me, given that all the definitions of terrorism in use that I'm aware of involve deliberate violence against civilians. It's because of discrepancies like this that I'm keen to stick to quotes and citations from reputable sources when referring to these groups as "terrorist." Let me know if that's okay with you. Cheers, SlimVirgin 02:16, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Tone and substance

Thanks for toning this down. It's easier to respond to the substance of a criticism when not distracted by the tone. You probably made a bunch of good points there, but frankly I tuned out after reading some personal remarks there. Uncle Ed 14:41, 21 July 2005 (UTC)